


bleeding with the skyline

by inkwelled



Series: pieces [1]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Blood and Injury, CatradoraWeek2018, Childhood Trauma, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Non-Graphic Violence, Patching Each Other Up, Rough Kissing, Scars, Sharing a Bed, Wordcount: 100-2.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 19:46:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17230088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkwelled/pseuds/inkwelled
Summary: Weakness equals uselessness.or— five times catra and adora bandage each other up, and the one time they don't get to. day one prompt; the horde/rebellion





	bleeding with the skyline

**Author's Note:**

> here it is folks - day one of catradora week! i'm so excited for the next eight days, you don't even know. i can't wait to see how everyone interprets the prompts differently, and for the influx of that sweet sweet catradora content because i can never get enough.
> 
> title ; [scars](https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/edsheeran/scars.html) by ed sheeran

The Horde discourages physical displays of weakness at all costs. It's for that reason that the medbay is so quiet all the time - while Hordak understands it's easier to heal a soldier than train another one, it's a stigma.

Weakness equals uselessness.

Catra is used to patching up her own wounds. Or, more accurately, she's used to _Adora_ bandaging her wounds, sneaking her extra rations when her stomach rolled and she went through heats.

She's five when her canines come in. For weeks, Catra yowls, restless, and gnaws on anything she can get her hands on.

Including Adora.

Then, it's normal for cadets to share beds. At night, the grinding of the gears in the walls that keep the lights flickering is the roar of monsters, the moving shadows are figures coming to flick back the bedsheets and steal children without a sound.

That's what they're told, at least.

Despite how Lonnie shoves her off when Catra nips at her fingers in passing, Adora doesn't do any of it. They lay in Catra's bottom bunk, and Catra teethes her way into bliss on the inside of Adora's wrist.

She's older when she sees the scars of when she drew blood, and Adora never saw a word. It's the first of many scars they give each other, first of the many times they tie off bandages around each other.

The rest of their childhood at the Horde blends together in a haze of Shadow Weaver's black magic, Adora's hands in her hair, the ache of her bones as she loses spar after spar and is turned away again and again by the closest thing she has to a mother.

By the time Catra is ten, she has plenty of scars.

Adora, surprisingly, has more.

Catra traces the one on her inner wrist late at night when the other cadets are dead to the world. She finds herself curling up at the end of her own bunk, content to let Adora sleep.

What's hers is Adora's.

And what's Adora's is hers.

Including scars, bandages, and everything in between.

"You should've let me take the hit," Catra scolds, wrapping the bandage around Adora's arm. She winces, and Catra makes sure to have a lighter touch.

Adora shrugs. Catra doesn't comment on the way her eyebrows furrow in pain, though she doesn't voice it. "You were down," Adora says simply, and watches the stark white of the bandage roll loop arund her forearm. "And I wasn't."

"You have to watch your back."

Adora smiles up at her, and despite her black eye, blood crusting around her mouth from her fall, Catra's heart pounds. She loves when Adora smiles at her like that, just simple and content.

It's selfish.

The Horde has never taught them to be selfless, so Catra takes and takes.

So what if she finds her happiness in Adora's - they're both happy, and that's what matters, _right?_ Sure, Catra has faded, pale pink zig-zags of burnt skin up her ribs from Shadow Weaver's magic, and Adora's nose is slightly crooked from the incident with the training staffs, but they're content.

Maybe not completely whole physically.

But with each other?

Catra doesn't know love. Or maybe she does - that's another thing the Horde has never bothered to teach them. She sits through countless lectures about politics, the best place to strike a combatant when they're down, the right way to hold a stun gun.

She doesn't know about love.

The space between her ribs whispers she does.

This time, it's Catra that Adora's patching up. It's late, so late the lights are out in the common room and she can't sleep. Lonnie has already snarled at her to go to sleep twice, but Adora finds she can't.

The end of the bed is cold, empty, and there's a Catra-sized hole in her heart.

Adora's head snaps up as the door slides open. A few bunks away, Lonnie groans but Adora can only hear the rasping, exhausted lilt of Catra's breathing. "Catra?"

Catra's breath is loud in her ear as she climbs into the bunk next to her. Her movement is slow, cautious, so unlike the usually fluid motions of the feline-like girl that Adora sits up. "Catra? Are you okay?"

"Shhh!"

Adora glares at the general area where she knows Lonnie's bunk is. Catra's chuckle is weak, her body heavy and cold even through the blanket, and they're thirteen standard years old.

"Yeah," Catra says slowly. "Adora, 'm fine. You know how Shadow Weaver is."

"Is that what your talk was about?"

In the darkness, Catra hisses as the blanket rustles. Lonnie groans, flips over, and Adora can hear the rasp of Rogelio's aggravated sigh. "Come on," she whispers to Catra and slips out from under the blankets.

Fumbling around for Catra in the darkness, her hand smacks against the feline's shoulder and she hisses between her teeth.

"Sorry," Adora winces and follows the line of her arm down to her hand. "C'mon. Let's get you cleaned up."

Catra is silent as they slip from the common room, and Adora squints when the lights of the locker room blink on. The brightness blinds her for a moment, and she fishes around in her locker for the worn roll of bandages.

"So, what did Shadow Weaver want-"

Adora turns around and freezes. The bandage roll falls to the floor, rolling under the bench. She doesn't notice.

Folded up on the bench, Catra doesn't look at her. Her best friend's hands are shaking in her lap, and Adora follows the line of blood steadily trickling from her forehead.

"What..."

Her friend does nothing, just sighs, and Adora brushes back a few strands her wild curls. "Catra," she breathes, cupping her chin and lifting it to get a better look at the black eye, "did Shadow Weaver do this to you?"

The fire in Adora's blue eyes jumps when Catra breaks eye contact. "You know me," she shrugs, looking down and biting her lip softly. She winces. Still tender, then. "It was my fault anyways - I let down the team today and disobeyed Weaver's orders."

Adora's sigh is heavy. "Catra. This isn't your fault."

"It isn't as bad as it looks!" Catra tries to protest, but Adora's having none of it. That same determination to _protect_  roars in her eyes as she dabs at the shallow cut in Catra's forehead and wraps bandages around it.

"I'll talk to her in the morning," Adora promises, and Catra believes her.

Adora smiles, leans close. "I don’t know why I bother patching you up when it takes you all of five minutes to get hurt again," she says, eyes glinting with mischief, and Catra shoves at her playfully.

"Hyprocite."

Catra believes everything Adora says in the dark.

After that, Catra starts to lose hope.

Adora comes to breakfast late, hands trembling, and when Catra bumps her shoulder against Adora's, her best friend turns away. It takes three days for Adora to start talking to her again.

They don't bring it up again.

Without fail, Adora patches up every wound Shadow Weaver inflicts.

Until she doesn't.

Catra wraps her sprained ankle, smiles at Adora through traitorous lips, and swears it doesn't hurt. Her best friend nods, turns away to say something to another cadet and Catra pushes around the rations on her plate.

She isn't hungry.

She ends up in the medbay, then.

Catra hates it.

Shadow Weavers bars Adora from the room. In the privacy of the small, quiet space, the sorceress threatens to have Catra thrown out because she can't worry Adora like that.

It'll drag her down.

Catra nods wordlessly, and Shadow Weaver orders the soldiers working at the medbay to release her. They protest for a moment but ultimately wilt under Weaver's command.

She outranks them. Catra returns to the common room shaky. When Adora rushes over to her side, concern creasing the corner of her eyes, Catra pretends like the only way she walked down the hallway was because she was leaning a hand against the wall.

Life goes on.

Honestly, Catra shouldn't be too surprised when Adora throws herself in front of a blow in training. Her best friend is selfless to a fault, always ready to take a blast for anyone.

It makes Catra's ribs warm and sends ice through her stomach.

Lonnie's training staff is coming towards Catra's neck, and she raises her forearms in defense, knowing she can't do anything to stop it now. She's pinned to the floor, and she winces with the knowledge of how much this'll hurt.

Adora's yell pounds through her ears instead. The pain never comes.

Catra opens her eyes to find Adora clutching her arm. On her knees, Adora's bent over herself, hair escaping from her ponytail.

Rare tears streak her cheeks.

In a moment, Catra's on her feet and sweeping Lonnie's out from under hers. With a yelp, the other girl goes down, a red x blinking across her chest armor, but Catra doesn't give herself time to relish in the defeat.

Adora's still on the floor.

She skids to her knees beside her best friend. "Can you walk?" she whispers, and Adora whimpers.

Let it not be said that Adora doesn't try, though, and even though she screeches between clenched teeth and hugs her arm closer to her chest, Adora makes it to their bunk.

Catra wipes carefully at her arm and apologizes softly when Adora gasps. Nothing compares to the flutter in her heart, though, when Adora smiles through her tears and reassures her - weakly - that she's fine.

"Bullshit," Catra whispers furiously and ignores Adora's gaping.

The gash is deep, leaking blood. In a flash, Catra realizes the blood will get on her bunk, but she doesn't care. Carefully, she cleans around the wound and has Adora bite down on a corner of the thin blanket when she has to go deeper. Throughout it all, Adora's eyes stay trained on her.

Catra pretends not to notice.

Not because she wants to - but because she _can't._ Already that feeling is rising in her chest again, banging around her ribs and demanding attention. The same feeling that got her in trouble with Shadow Weaver, the one that keeps her from hating Adora.

No matter how hard she tries.

"Thank you," Adora says afterward, pale from blood loss. "Sorry for bleeding all over your blanket."

Catra shrugs. "I'll just steal the one from yours."

It's the closest they ever get to addressing how they still share a bunk, even though they're sixteen and the only two cadets that still do are Rogelio and Kyle. Catra doesn't think too hard about that.

She can't.

She won't let herself.

She's long since realized what the grinding in her throat whenever Adora smiles means. She's no fool; the Horde may think her stupid and useless, but Catra watches how the other cadets act around each other when left to their own devices.

She watches silent, observes.

Adora doesn't know what kissing is.

Catra does and does it anyway.

The first time it happens, it's right after their last training session before the test that will graduate them to soldiers and not cadets. Adora's shining, hair sticking to her forehead and sweat glistening across her exposed collarbones, and Catra lines up their bodies and kisses her until she sees stars.

Adora's hands travel softly to her waist, and Catra hates the weak fluttering in her ribs when she swallows Adora's groan.

They don't talk about it.

They never do.

Adora smiles at her brightly despite the blood beading up from the split lip where Catra bit at her lower lip. Catra swipes it away with her finger and kisses her again.

She doesn't know if Adora's lip ever scars.

Adora isn't around long enough for Catra to find out.

She isn't quick enough to grab Adora's wrist when she falls off the skiff. Screaming, Adora's hand slips through her own and Catra screams when she disappears into the large leaves of the Whispering Woods.

Although she finds Adora and leans close enough to see if Adora's hurt, Catra doesn't notice the fissure until it's too late. Until Adora is sneaking from their bunk, leaving Catra behind in the dark hallway with a poorly-explained hunt echoing in her ears.

Adora doesn't come back, then.

Catra learns to patch up her scars. The Horde pounds _weakness is uselessness_  into them and Catra fastens a Force Commander badge over her chest and pretends it fixes the broken heart there.

It doesn't work.

Unlike all her other scars, this one festers.

Catra lets it. She bitterly hopes Adora's feeling the same way, but doesn't bother to ask when She-Ra is kneeling before her, wrapped in cords that sing with neon green energy that spikes up the legendary warrior's figure.

She-Ra falls forward, and Catra lets the break in her chest grow.

Her ribs don't heal when she's thrown back into the tank. Despite Scorpia's hovering, Catra waves her off and lays in bed. Every breath a stab through her chest, she thinks of the scratches bleeding down She-Ra's back, the lines on her cheek.

Perfectly parallel, evenly spaced.

Catra's ribs heal. She traces the scar in the mirror when she's alone, and the lighting flickers just so that she can see the way her eyes stare deadly right back at her.

She-Ra's costume is repaired. Catra watches the way she winces the next time they meet in the battlefield.

She hates how she takes advantage of the scars.

 _But then again,_  that little voice in her head spits, _isn't that what she did to you?_

Catra doesn't scar, because she doesn't leave her wounds alone long enough for them to even start to heal. It's a cycle. Catra lets it be.


End file.
